Cellars, wages and gardens: Luke’s accommodation for middle-class Christians

Abstract

The Gospel of Luke has been described as having ‘more material from the tradition on the question of justice for the poor and downtrodden than any other evangelist,’ Yet Luke also addresses the situation of the rich and powerful, and not always in a critical fashion. So there is an ambiguity within the gospel, which has not received sufficient attention from the scholarly world. Using redaction criticism, I intend to show that the presentation of Jesus in Luke is no closer to the socio-political situation of Jesus’ time than that in Matthew or Mark. Indeed, the purpose of the gospel may be to explain how a message of significance to wealthy Romans came to arise in such unlikely circumstances as rural Palestine.